


The beggar maid

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-15 10:10:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: Fortune and destiny play with the lives of men in a twisted way. This time they take pity on the elder sister at the expense of the younger. This time Sansa Stark flees, helped by an unsuspecting friend, and Arya Stark is held hostage in the lion's den.





	The beggar maid

Fortune and destiny play with the lives of men in a twisted way. This time they take pity on the elder sister at the expense of the younger. This time Sansa Stark flees, helped by an unsuspecting friend, and Arya Stark is held hostage in the lion's den.

A kid dressed in rags that reminds her of Bran before the fall opens a secret passage in a wall and on Varys's instruction he gets her to safety, hiding her in a brothel. It is owned by Petyr Baelish and it’s the same that a few months ago hosted her mother, but Sansa cannot know this. Just as she cannot know that the if she is safe, it’s for a secret agreement between Littlefinger and the Spider. The reason behind Littlefinger’s act is her mother, always her mother. In the case of Varys, however, is the memory of her smile when Loras Tyrell gave her a rose at the Hand’s tourney. Elia Martell, he thought looking at her and at that time he chose which sister to rescue.

There Sansa Stark remains, hidden and safe, waiting for what fate has in store for her. Women dye her hair squid ink and give her a new name. Alayne is taught in the art of love. They teach her the amount of moon tea needed to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, enough to eradicate life from the womb, but not to endanger the mother, and show her how to flatter a man's vanity.

One night, when the worry is too much to be able to sleep, Sansa sits on the window sill and watches the moon, thinking of home. By chance, in the drunken group that empty their bladder downstairs, she listens two golden cloaks that speak of Lord Eddard Stark's public condemnation scheduled for the next day.

She looks around. The brocade and silk curtains, the refined foods, the precious dress she wears. She could be safe here. Then she thinks of Arya and Father. The loyalty to her family prevails over everything else.

She wrestles the little she possesses in a canvas bag, wears a cloak, and prepares to sneak out of the backdoor.

"Where are you going?"

Sansa turns with her heart up her throat, recognizing in the shade that spoke one of the women of the house. Her name, if she remembers correctly, is Lyda.

She faces with peculiar calm the naked woman glare’s.

Her hair is ruby red and fall into wavy bands on her breasts. Unlike hers, the red of her hair is the result of accurate dyes. Sansa remembers her comment when she helped her make it the first time, that it was a waste to hide such a beautiful color. Everything in those rooms is pure appearance, the result of artificial maneuvers to enchant and astonish customers.

"Where are you going?" The woman repeats, advancing towards her, feline. The moonlight shines silver on her smooth skin. Sansa doesn’t look away, doesn’t blush. Here's something of her that is dead. Her modesty.

"I cannot stay here anymore," she replies.

"Why?"

She could lie. Sansa, however, recalls the kindness that Lyda and the other women have shown towards her. They were maternal and in the warmth of their caring, the nostalgia of her mother has become a bearable weight.

"They will kill my father."

"What do you think you can do all by yourself?"

Not much, she admits. The fear of what might happen to her coming out of that door makes her tremble and for a moment she reconsiders the absurdity of what she is doing. She takes a deep breath. "I have to go," she says stubbornly.

Lyda's eyes are inscrutable. "Then go," she says, and Sansa could laugh for the relief. "But not like that," she continues, examining her appearance with disapproval. "You're too recognizable."

Lyda has her wear a very plain cloth and binds her hair into a simple braid at the back of her neck. She raises her skirts and hides in her smallclothes a bag of silver pieces. Then she accompanies her to the service door and gives her precise directions on how to reach the Baelor temple. "Now you are ready to face your destiny," she says and rests a cold and quick kiss on her lips.

Sansa doesn’t retreat, and when the tears cling to her lashes, she lowers her hood, and in the light of the dawn she walks away through the already busy streets of the Flea Bottom.

 

* * *

 

The sun is high and bright in the sky when Joffrey orders his father's execution with a squeaky voice, accusing him of treason against the crown. It's a beautiful day when Ser Ilyn Payne beheads Eddard Stark on the steps of the Baelor temple and his head rolls like an apple falling from the tree because too mature.

Sansa is not agile or minute like Arya. She cannot climb on the statue of Baelor, but she is tall for her age and she still can assist the whole scene. There is no one who orders her not to look, no one to stop her from watching. Arya screams and struggle to free herself from the grip of the Hound. "Monsters!" She cries out. "You are all monsters! My father is innocent! _Innocent_! And you are liars! Impostors!"

Varys moves with discretion from the queen and new king side and whispers something in Sandor Clegane's ear. Few seconds later, with a blow to the head, Arya passes out and is readily grasped by the Hound before touching the stone floor.

Sansa cannot scream, unlike her sister, but every part of her does it silently. She glares with hate at the nobles clustered on the terrace overlooking the square. Do something, she would like to beg. Someone, whoever, does something.

Arya doesn’t see the sword fall, but she does, and it is an image that will persecute her for the rest of her life. She feels her strength diminished and tears of impotence begin to flow along her cheeks. The heat of the sun knocking on the head and the confusion of the crowded crowd do not help.

Her father is dead. Her sister is lost. Getting out of the town is impossible, the gates are under close surveillance. What's left to her if not despair?

A hand drops on her arm and when she tries instinctively to slip out, the unknown man grabs her hips with strength and shuts her mouth. Terrified, she quickly blows her eyelids to disperse the tears and recognizes in the man dressed in black a Night’s Watch.

"I know your uncle Benjen," he explains and lets her go after she has promised to not scream. "I knew your father."

He referred in the past tense and Sansa would like to scream and cry a little more for that. Instead she straightens her shoulders and fretfully wipes away the tears with the back of her hand. "How did you recognize me?" she asks and he shoots a smile more like a grin.

"Even so," he says roughly, picking up her hair, dark as the earth, between his callous fingers, "you're the spitting image of your mother. A Tully in every way."

 _I am a Stark_ , she wants to say, but she holds her tongue. Being a Stark now can be a death sentence. "Can you help me?"

He sighs and for a moment Sansa is sure he will refuse. Then he nods. "Aye," he says. "I have to be crazy, but if I do not, I bet your father would return from the dead to haunt me."

 

* * *

 

 

"She's a girl!" Exclaims one of the guys in the caravan. Yoren, who is tying one of the horses behind the wagon, is about to answer, but Sansa precedes him.

"My name is Alayne Snow," she says firmly. One of the other guys, tall and robust, with clear eyes like the White Knife waters, studies the scene with interest.

The boy, Hot Pie, turns to Yoren, as if she did not speak. "She's a girl," he repeats, stubbornly and at the same time puzzled. "She should not be here." What he means is as clear as the sun. _Why_ she is with them, in a band of recruits headed for the Wall, is the real question.

Sansa was expecting it. She had been waiting for it from the moment when Yoren grumbled, saying that even cutting her hair no one could have misunderstood her for a boy and ordered her to keep a low profile. She had only hoped to have more time, to put as much distance between her and King's Landing. The capital is still too close and so the threat it represents.

"She’s here because I decided so," Yoren says, and if the warning in his voice was not obvious, then it is the seemingly random way in which he put a hand on the sword handle. "If someone has a problem with her presence, come and tell me."

This is enough to silence any controversy, but not the curiosity. No one has the courage to approach her openly or ask her questions, but Sansa knows that whilst Yoren's reaction has come up with the desired effect, it has also served to arouse more suspicion on her account. She is a girl directed towards the North and presented herself as a Snow. If the caravan got stopped and the men questioned, they could discover her identity too easily.

Sansa hates feeling that way. This loss, this frustration, the constant fear of being found. Meanwhile, she tries to make herself useful. It soon becomes apparent that she is inept for any task assigned to her. After a couple of disastrous attempts, the laundry becomes easily enough, but after preparing for a week's meals with poor results, there is a sort of collective mutiny and for common decision the task falls on Hot Pie’s shoulders.

After nearly a month of travel, Sansa is already tired of the outdoor life. Sleeping on the ground, even though a place near the fire is often given to her. Just stop for short stops and leave again at dawn. The limitations of a daily life that is strange and new. Everything is difficult and uncomfortable.

She went to pick up water from the nearby stream and took advantage of it to sit for a moment on a rock when a loud noise made her overturn. Gendry emerges from behind a tree, arms full of firewood.

In a habit consolidated by years of lessons imparted by Septa Mordane, she smiles at him. Gendry frowns and the smile dies on her lips.

Sansa blushes suddenly and lowers her head. She forgets too often that she is no longer Sansa Stark. Her name is Alayne Snow and she is the daughter of a spice merchant and a whore. She grew up in a brothel, but ran away before they could enter her into the profession.

"You can stop pretending with me."

Gendry has approached her in the meantime. "I know who you are," he says, and Sansa feels like dying.

"You cannot tell anyone," she says hastily, looking around with a frightened expression to check that there is nobody in the neighborhood listening their conversation.

"You don’t even try to deny it? You do not know what I know and if what I say is true. "

Sansa bites her lower lip. He's right and she's a fool. "What do you know?" She tries to remedy, even if it's too late.

"I know that your name is not Alayne Snow," he says, going to sit on a stone not far from hers and resting the wood gathered in the space that separates them. "I know you are running away from King's Landing."

"How did you find out?"

"I guessed. No bastard born would smile like you. I know something about that." He smiles and the grim line of his smile is so similar to what she for years has seen on Jon's lips that she feels a dull in her heart.

"And the rest?"

"Suppositions," he answers, shrugging. He picked up a twig and passed it between his fingers. It seems he cannot sit around and do nothing. "The way you look back and forth all the way, as if you're afraid someone is following us."

"But you do not know who I am. Not really."

This time, before answering, he takes time to reflect. Sansa is sure to have seen eyes similar to his before, but she does not know where or when. "I can imagine this too. You walk and talk like a lady. You do not know how to cook and you've never worked in your life. You're dying your hair, right?" In front of her silence, he explains patiently: "It begins to show at the temples. In fact they are red. I am wrong?"

Sansa joins her hands as in prayer. "Just say it," she orders and the pretence is over. If it had not happened before, now she stopped being Alayne and went back to being Sansa.

He leans over as if he intends to confess her a secret. "Sansa Stark," he whispers and for the first time since her father's death, she starts breathing again.

 

* * *

 

Sansa is not Arya and Arya is not Sansa. The two sisters are different as day and night, yet their enthusiasm and pride makes them more alike they do not seem.

Gendry likes Sansa and wants to help her. He likes her, but not how he would like Arya. He likes her differently and the desire to protect this haughty and naive little girl is different from the instinctive and fierce desire he would have felt for another bold, impulsive little girl.

Nonetheless, this is the little girl whom he has to deal with, and is this girl who a night of many months later remembers where she has already seen eyes similar to his and whispers his real name in his ear.

"Your name is Baratheon, not Waters," she says under the starry sky. "And if you wanted, you could be the legitimate heir to the throne of the Seven Kingdoms."

"One of the many," he tries to joke, but the smile does not reach his eyes. The flames of the field fire project shadows on his thin face.

The claimants to the iron throne counted at the moment are four. Her brother is not among them.

They call him The Young Wolf. They gave him a bronze and iron crown and he did not lose any of the military campaigns he fought. Yet its army, though initially directed southward, has been stuck in the Riverlands and there remains, battle after battle, victory after victory.

After the Battle of the Whispering Wood and the capture of Jaime Lannister, word spread that Robb Stark refused to swap the Kingslayer with his sisters. Part of her hates Robb for that. Part of her hates herself, thinking she is the same as him. At the time of need she was the first to abandon Arya and it is something she will never forgive herself.

 

* * *

 

There is one thing that does not change, despite everything. There are nights where nightmares keep her awake for hours and hours, others during which she wakes up screaming or because she is shocked by Gendry.

Sansa dreams of decapitated heads and the cruel smirk of Joffrey, of Lady, and the things she has lost or seem to have gone lost, the transposition of her most intimate fears, the disheartened corpses of her family.

One morning like many others, after a particularly turbulent night, Yoren lets her take care of the horses because he knows it relaxes her. Her portion of porridge has been garnished with hazelnuts and she finds a bunch of purple pansies on her seat on the wagon.

To distract her, that night, Gendry tells her about his apprenticeship as a blacksmith, of Tobho Mott, the master armorer and even of his mother. Gradually, Sansa also begins to speak. She tells him about small anecdotes and episodes of her childhood, Arya's love for mischief, her friend Jeyne, Old Nan's stories, Bran's passion for climbing, and his dream of becoming a knight, of Robb and Jon and Theon swordfighting at the staircases of Winterfell and the fierce love of her parents.

With Arya, Gendry would never open like this. Of Arya, he would have guarded the secrets and silences and the sulking and the bad mood. Sansa is different. She needs words, stories that remind her that beyond the ugliness and brutality the world can offer much more. Arya was born to fight. Sansa also, but she is predisposed for a different kind of fight.

Gendry collects Sansa’s stories and thanks to them he succeeds in building a very precise idea of her home. Great Winter is a safe place, it's where she grew up and where she has the happiest memories. There’s no wonder she desperately wants to come back.

With Arya it would have been a peer relationship, a friendship with confused shades.

Arya probably would not appreciate Hot Pie’s attentions, considering them as recognition of her weakness. She would never accept being protected. Sansa, in spite of everything, does not ask for anything else. For Arya he would have been a friend and maybe something more. To Sansa he is a protector.

 

* * *

 

When the Lannister soldiers attack their band, Gendry pulls her and Hot Pie aside and hides them behind a large oak far away from the wagons.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Sansa fails to figure out why he is apologizing. Then he slaps her on both cheeks, strong enough to blow her head against the trunk for the rebound. When the buzz of blood in the ears becomes bleak, she see Gendry turn to Hot Pie, give him a knife and tell him, "I'll leave the rest to you. You know what to do."

He runs away to try to save the other kids and Sansa does not know what she feels. Whether it is rage or surprise or betrayal.

The regret in Hot Pie’s eyes is genuine and when he stretches out a hand to touch the tumulus zone that is already swelling on her face, she instinctively shifts.

"I'm sorry," he says just like Gendry, but the urgency in his voice makes her pause. "There's no time. You have to trust us. We are... we are friends, right?" He pleads.

Friends, she thinks. Friends do not hurt each other. Friends are sincere to each other. Yet, looking at the brown and honest eyes of the boy in front of her, Sansa cannot think of another word to define the bond that binds them.

She nods and his relief is instantaneous. "We have a plan," he explains in a hurry, and as he approaches the knife to her neck, she shakes, but does not move away. He begins to cut her hair. Quickly and badly. It's not a methodical and precise job, but a messy one. "I almost finished," he says, and she tries not to look sorrowfully at the long haircuts that curl on the ground at her feet, not to focus on the feeling of vulnerability at the base of her neck.

Hot Pie puts the knife in his trousers belt and bends to dip his fingers into the mud. "Spit it on your face."

Sansa does as she has been told while the reality of the situation begins to emerge. They are not _betraying_ her. They're _saving_ her.

When Gendry returns after what seems like an eternity, he has breeches and a tunic. Sansa changes as the laughter of the soldiers fills the air of the night and the cold and the fear make her skin leap.

Gendry watches over them like a hawk and turns his back as she takes off her dress. Hot Pie steals a glance or two at her, blushing visibly, and despite the situation, Sansa would like to laugh at his embarrassment. She would like to tell him about the weeks she spent in one of the most renowned brothel of the capital.

When she's done, Gendry turns and checks her from head to toe. His brow decreases and Sansa relaxes imperceptibly. She knows that her disguise is a temporary solution. It serves to gain time.

Gendry uniforms the dirt layer on her face and the rude gentleness of his fingers sharpens the contrast with the brutality of just before.

He puts his hands on her shoulders. "Now, listen to me. Your name is Bence and you are an orphan. You stopped talking  ever since your family was assassinated in front of you. Did you understand me?"

Sansa nods, too terrified to speak. The noises are approaching and the dark is lit by the flames of a fire set.

"Good girl," says Gendry with a tigh-lipped smile, and Sansa tries to smile at him, without success.

Alayne Snow. Bence. How many people will she still have to pretend to be before reaching Winterfell?

 

* * *

 

That night she saves three lives from death and fire. That night, she earns another name. Flowers girl. When she replies upset that she is no longer that type of girl, and there is no place for flowers in war time, Jaqen laughs mysteriously.

His eyes are like night, obscure and full of pitfalls.

 


End file.
